Monte Rosa Hütte

We eventually got on the train from Sierre and were on our way to Zermatt!

Once we arrived, we dumped our luggage at the Airbnb, and got dinner.

#Rösti

The plan was to hike over to the Monte Rosa Hütte. The next morning, we got the train up to Gornergrat, and got off at Riffelsee

Then we were off to the hut!

Blue skies with rainstorms in the forecast for the afternoon

Gorner Glacier and Monte Rosa massif

The glacier was all dried up

…and wanded, so we followed those between the open crevasses

The Matterhorn doing its cloud making thing

Big jumps were required. Ominous clouds were forming in the East… We eventually made it over to the trail, and it was very well marked the rest of the way

Check out those crevasses!

We eventually made it to the trails, snacked, took off our crampons, and kept going. Off in the distance, from the valley, we heard and saw a chopper

It was Air Zermatt picking up an injured hiker 🙁

HOIST!

They flew a bit in while like this, and eventually they got the patient and EMT inside. We ran into the hiker’s partner, who seemed flustered, and told us we shoulda brought more layers.

(we all had extra layers in our packs)

FIRST SIGHTING!

From there, we made it to the hut pretty quickly

The interior was pretty spectacular. The bathrooms were nice, and check out this dining room!!!

Apricot tart!

Some other slice!

I could spend more time here… but we had to go! Clouds were moving in from behind us

We wound up on the old trail on the return trip, which led us to an odd boulder field which we had to carefully navigate through. Group dynamics were a little stressed, but we eventually passed through, merged back to the new trail, and right when we got to the trail-to-glacier junction, it started raining…